Ministry of Innovation —

Week in review: superfast rechargable edition

Ars reviews the biggest stories of the week: batteries that can recharge in 10 …

The megapixel arms race may soon be over. Long used by marketers and consumers as the ultimate arbiter of a camera's quality (much like megahertz and gigahertz), megapixels are reaching the end of their life as the primary designation of a digital camera's quality. Manufacturers and consumers will have to focus on other metrics, including low-light performance and dynamic range.

Is it possible to out-Google Google? Stephen Wolfram, famous for creating Mathematica, believes so. He has announced Wolfram Alpha, his "true computational knowledge engine," set to debut in May. We're a bit skeptical about it, to say the least.

For the geekerati, one of the most-anticipated films of 2009 was Watchmen. Ars went to the movies and, for the most part, liked what we saw. A great comic has become an uneven, if masterfully created, film. Oh, it's also three hours long.

Rechargeable batteries are fantastic—except for when they're fully discharged and you have an immediate need for them. A breakthrough reported this week may change all that. Researchers have developed a new version of the old standby lithium battery that can deliver a full charge in as little as 10 seconds.

One of the strongest arguments OSS adherents have made is the amount of money saved by moving from proprietary to open software. The national police force of France is a big fan of Ubuntu, reporting that its switch to Linux has saved it "millions of euros." Instead of migrating to Windows Vista, the Gendarmerie Nationale decided to switch to Ubuntu.